


like real people do

by katplanet



Series: sleep to the freezing [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Enthusiastic Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, Ghost Sex, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Off-Screen Bentacle Body Horror, Platonic Cuddling, Polyamory, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Trans Male Character, V-Shaped Relationship, canon-typical abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-01-06 17:23:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18392933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katplanet/pseuds/katplanet
Summary: “You and Klaus,” Dave says. “It’s amazing that you grew up to be the people you are.”“What, maladjusted thirty-somethings who know a lot of esoteric shit about death?”“I meant,” Dave says, “good. You’re both so good.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I tripped onto my keyboard and this fell out.
> 
> Not all warnings apply to all chapters, and I'll give thorough content warnings for each chapter! This one has a brief description of a medical procedure Ben underwent as a child that he had to be awake for; he doesn't go into detail, and quickly changes the subject. There's also some discussion of Klaus's past drug use, although he's sober during the fic.
> 
> Ben and Klaus love each other dearly and maybe a touch codependently in this story, but they don't have a romantic or sexual relationship with each other. They do, as the tags suggest, end up timesharing a ghost boyfriend.

“Hi, Ben.”

Ben automatically glances at Klaus, because even after everything, the only person he ever expects to speak directly to him is Klaus. But Klaus is still asleep on the couch, neck bent at an uncanny angle, and the voice doesn't match Klaus, anyway. It's a warm voice, summery.

Ben looks over his other shoulder, and there's a man standing there in worn-down army fatigues, his helmet slightly crooked on his head. He’s smiling with his whole whitebread face.

“Hey, Dave,” Ben says.

Dave takes a few steps closer. “Wasn’t sure you’d know who I was.”

“I was there. I mean,” Ben adds, “I was sometimes there. Not all the time. I had some discretion.”

“I appreciate that,” Dave says, his grin turning bashful in a way that dead people’s usually don’t.

“Do you, uh,” Ben starts. He pauses, changes tracks. “Does he know you’re here?”

“Not yet.” Dave stops to stand beside Ben. “I’ve been trying, but I haven’t been able to get through.”

They stand there together, awkward and deceased, looking at Klaus.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Ben offers.

“Likewise. Klaus had nothing but nice things to say about you.”

“I should hope so.”

Klaus shuffles on the couch and makes a tiny sound in the back of his throat. He has the same set of little sleep noises at thirty that he did when he was thirteen, and they mean the same things. This one is a content noise, not a nightmare noise.

Ben glances at Dave. He's got his eyes locked on Klaus like a begging puppy. Ben has seen that expression directed at Klaus plenty of times before, but Klaus was always doing something to inspire it, usually something that Ben tactfully turned away from. Right now, Klaus has his chin shoved into his neck, his mouth hanging open, drool starting to collect in the corners.

“Thanks,” Ben says. “For taking care of him.”

“‘Course. I could say the same thing.”

Ben tries and fails to remember the last time he had an actual human conversation that Klaus wasn't also part of. He talks to his siblings, now, but only when Klaus is around to make him fully visible to other people. Before that, he talked to Klaus. And before  _ that _ , before he died, he was still just as tethered to Klaus as he is now, a shadow floating behind him, Klaus's personality big enough to cover for both of them.

Dave says, “I haven't done this in a while.”

Ben laughs before he can stop himself. “I mean, that makes two of us.”

“I think you're doing okay.”

“You're doing fine, too.”

“It's like a parody of a conversation,” Dave says, his voice soft. “I'm sorry. I really - I really don't know if this is how it's supposed to go or not.”

“This happened to me when I was alive, too,” Ben tells him. “I think it's a human thing, not a dead thing.”

“Maybe.”

Ben sits down on the couch across from the one Klaus is passed out on. It has more give than any of the furniture at the Academy ever did, function over form in a way Reginald Hargreeves would have hated, and Ben sinks a good inch into the cushion. He's still getting used to toeing the line of corporeality like this, the thing that ties him to Klaus strengthening enough to tie him to the rest of the world. When Dave sits down next to him, the cushions don't move.

“Can I,” Ben says, holding his hand out toward Dave's shoulder.

Dave nods, so Ben reaches the rest of the way. There's resistance when he touches Dave in the same way that other objects he wants to touch resist him - no texture, no warmth, but a clear solidity that Ben can hold on to. Ben remembers the feeling of rough fabric under his palms when he was alive, times he ran his hands down his own blazer or held on to one of his siblings’ sleeves, and what’s left of his brain fills in the gaps the way it sometimes does, so he touches the strange shifting topography of the jacket in double - experience and memory, textureless and textured, like an optical illusion for whatever he has now instead of nerves.

Dave smiles. “That's strange.”

“What does it feel like?” Ben asks him.

“Like someone touching my arm through my jacket.” Dave shrugs, and Ben's hand moves up and down with his shoulder. “Let me - here,” he says, and he lifts his own hand up to touch Ben's. “What does that feel like?”

“Skin,” Ben says. “Kind of.”

Dave shakes his head and lowers his hand. “I never really thought about this before. What would happen to my soul when my body was gone.”

“I don't know that you and I are having the standard experience.”

“Yeah, they didn't mention this possibility in Hebrew school.”

Ben laughs, because Dave is also laughing. They sit there chuckling at each other, a tiny bit manic, while Klaus does a much better impression of death across from them.

“I, um.” Ben looks back at his inelegant heap of a brother. “I can tell him something from you, if you want. When he wakes up.”

Dave shakes his head. “It's okay. It'll only frustrate him, don't you think?”

“Maybe he could use some motivation to figure out his powers.”

“I'm not,” Dave starts, then stops.

Ben pulls his feet up onto the couch and sits cross-legged. His legs had bad circulation when he was alive, and got bored and tingly whenever he kept them in one position for too long. Now his consciousness gets bored and tingly, instead.

“I don't want him to feel useless,” Dave says, finally. “He'll torture himself. I've already put him through enough.”

“It's not your fault you died.”

“Yeah, well.” Dave leans back and crosses his arms, his eyes back on Klaus. “I didn't have control over that. I have control over this.”

Ben chews on that for a while.“Your boyfriend, your call,” he says, eventually. “I'm a bad liar, though.”

“You can tell him if he asks. Just don't bring it up first. If that's okay with you.”

“Lying by omission.”

“This is a lot to put on you. I'm sorry.”

Ben shakes his head. “Don't be. I'm glad you're here.”

“It’s selfish of me. I was getting bored trailing around by my lonesome.”

“It's pretty boring, all things considered. Being dead.”

Dave laughs some more at that. He has a sunshine laugh that eats up his entire face, starts at his eyes and avalanches out until everything is crinkled and lovely. Of course Klaus stayed in a war zone to keep being the cause of a smile like that. No one they knew growing up had the range of emotion to make their expressions seem real.

“We're a mess,” Ben says, apropos of nothing. “You've hitched your cart to a dying horse.”

“Well,” Dave says, “dying beats dead any day.”

Klaus shuffles on his couch, tilts his head back to a more natural angle, hums as he starts to be aware of his body again. Dave folds his arms tighter against his chest and looks like someone told him they retroactively uninvented time travel.

“I should go,” Dave says.

“Hey,” Ben tells him. “We'll figure this out. And any time you want company, I'll be around.”

“Hell.” Dave closes his eyes. “I'll see you soon, Ben.”

And then Dave's just gone, in the same way Ben knows he's also sometimes just gone. He can feel it when it happens to him, a loosening of something, the rest of the world dulling until it's grey and quiet and he's alone. He can hear Klaus, sometimes, if Klaus wants himself to be heard. Maybe Dave would be able to hear Klaus from wherever he is, if Klaus called to him.

“Benjamin,” Klaus mumbles, stretching all of his ridiculous gangly limbs in different directions.

“Klausjamin.”

“What did I miss?”

“Angsty conversations.”

“Oh, joy.” Klaus opens his eyes and squints over at Ben. “Were you watching me sleep?”

“Sort of.”

“Creep,” Klaus says fondly, sitting up and patting the empty space he leaves next to him on the couch. “Come here.”

Ben goes, and lets Klaus lie back down with his head in Ben's lap. He allows himself a brief moment of guilt over keeping a secret  _ from _ Klaus instead of  _ for _ Klaus, for once, then sets it aside with all the other guilts he's learned to live with.

“Hair,” Klaus pouts, and Ben rolls his eyes, tucks his fingers into Klaus's curls, scratches at his scalp.

Klaus nestles closer to Ben, which is the only reason Ben notices he's shivering. The worst of Klaus's withdrawal passed a week ago, after he worked his way through the stuff he brought back in time in his vest pockets, but his body is still reeling, and his brain still wants the quickest fix it knows.

“Do you want me to talk to you?” Ben asks him.

Klaus shakes his head. “Just pet me, please.”

So Ben pets him, easy repetitive motions in his hair. Klaus wraps an arm around Ben's waist, folds the other one into his own chest, and either falls back asleep or does a good imitation of it.

Ben does a quick thumbs up, in case Dave is watching.

℘

Ben doesn’t see Dave every time Klaus is otherwise occupied, but it happens often enough that he starts to get disappointed when it doesn’t.

“Where are we?” Dave asks Ben, while Klaus showers down the hall.

“Five secured a safehouse for us,” Ben says. “Those were his words.  _ I secured a safehouse for us. _ Like he didn't just plop us in suburbia somewhere to kill time.”

“It's a nice place.”

“It's weird,” Ben says, because it is. Beige walls, muted blue carpet, a round wooden dining table made to fit a family of four. Three bedrooms, two and a half baths. Allison and Luther share a room, Klaus claimed another bedroom for himself and Ben, Diego and Five sleep in the half-finished basement. Vanya lies in the smallest bedroom, pale and motionless, an IV in her arm with nutrients that, at this point in whatever's happening to her, she might not even need.

“Klaus told me about the house you grew up in,” Dave says. “He talked about it like it was an orphanage. I guess that's how he thought I would understand it best.”

“An orphanage might have been nicer.”

“I don’t know about that,” Dave says, the kind of sweet knee-jerk thing someone raised in a middle American home with two loving parents and a series of affectionate dogs would say. Ben can’t even be bitter about it. It’s too earnest.

“At least we would have gotten what it said on the tin,” Ben says. “No one would have asked us to call them ‘dad’ unless they were going to follow up on the promise.”

Dave pats Ben’s shoulder a few times, half as a show of comfort and half, Ben assumes, for the novelty of human contact. “Klaus talked about him, too. I would say I was sure he loved you,” Dave tells him, “but I’m not.”

“Maybe he did,” Ben says. “Maybe he didn’t know how to show it. At least, not in a way that children would understand.”

“Do you understand it now?”

“Not really.”

“Well, there you go.”

Ben huffs and nods. “Yeah. I don’t think I ever had an actual conversation with him in twenty-three years. He only let mom start me on hormone blockers once he was positive they wouldn’t interfere with my  _ gift _ .”

“Hormone blockers?”

Right, the sixties. “I, uh.” Ben waves his hand above his lap. “Puberty wasn’t going to take me in the direction I wanted to go. So I blocked it until I was old enough, and then I took testosterone. Which I guess I don’t need to worry about anymore.”

Dave nods like he understands perfectly. Maybe, after a year of talking to Klaus, he does. “Does it work the other way? Like, if you want to grow up to be a woman?”

“Yeah, you can do estrogen.”

Dave smiles, sad. “I knew some girls back home who would’ve liked that.”

“You can start later in life, too. Maybe they did.”

“I hope so.”

Ben scoots a little closer to Dave on the couch. “Things got a lot better,” he says. “For people like us.”

“It took me a long time to believe Klaus was serious,” Dave says. “I don’t know. The way he acted, the things he said. I couldn’t imagine a boy growing up and not getting it beaten out of him.”

“He got other things beaten out of him,” Ben says, because it’s true. “I tried to help, but I was getting things beaten out of me, too.”

“I’ll bet you helped more than you know.”

“I tried.”

“Sometimes that’s the most important part.”

Ben shakes his head. “Me trying didn’t stop Klaus from getting locked in mausoleums overnight.”

Dave leans back, looking thoughtful. “Were you there on our way out of Da Nang?”

“Sort of. I think.” Ben purses his lips. “Were you fighting people?”

“Yeah,” Dave says. “Yeah, we were fighting people.”

“I made myself scarce during the fighting parts. Sorry,” Ben adds, belated.

“No, don’t apologize. I would have made myself scarce if I could have.” The corner of Dave’s mouth twitches. “I didn’t have a great experience. I don’t know if you gathered that.”

“Oh, it seemed like it went so well for you.”

It’s the kind of dumb thing Ben would say to Klaus, with the understanding that concern and care were baked into it, a way to lighten the mood without changing the subject. As soon as it’s out of his mouth, Ben half expects Dave to leave, or punch him, or at least make a face. But Dave snorts with undignified laughter, because he’s Klaus’s boyfriend, so of course he has a grim sense of humor.

“I had a bad day,” Dave continues, at odds with the way he’s still sort of smiling. “Really bad. This was around two weeks after Klaus, um, arrived. He barely knew me. We’d only chatted while we traveled, at that point.”

“He imprints quickly.”

“Lucky for me,” Dave says. “The night after this bad day, I couldn’t sleep. My eyes wouldn’t shut. I don’t know how to describe it.”

“Like lying on a metal table,” Ben says. “Full of uppers.”

Dave raises an eyebrow. “I hope that’s not personal experience talking.”

“Mom and dad had to check out my stomach cavity, once,” Ben tells him, because with no one but Klaus to talk to, Ben never developed a filter. “It, um. I had to be awake so I could hold back my passengers. It’s complicated.”

Dave visibly prevents himself from saying whatever first comes to his mind, and eventually settles for, “You remember it?”

“All I remember is feeling so tired from the anesthesia, but I couldn’t fall asleep, because no one would let me. It’s not really that big of a deal.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Dave says, in a tone of voice that makes Ben suspect that he will not, in fact, take Ben’s word for it. But he drops it, and asks, “Did Klaus take care of you, afterwards?”

“Of course he did. As soon as mom let him in the room.”

“He took care of me, too.” Dave glances over his shoulder toward the faint sound of shower water, then looks back at Ben. “I must have started breathing fast, or something, because next thing I knew, he was crawling onto my pallet, no hesitation or embarrassment or anything. And he couldn’t talk me out of what was going on in my head, and he knew that, so he laid down next to me and held me. I’d never had anyone hold me like that before, without expecting anything in return.”

“Sounds like Klaus.”

“He couldn’t fix anything,” Dave says, “but I knew he wanted to, that he would have if he could have. It made the whole thing feel tangible, like it wasn’t just my brain eating itself alive. I could hold it away from myself and look at it through his eyes instead of my own. It helped.”

Ben isn’t sure what to say to that, so he tips his head to the side and watches emotions play over Dave’s face. He’s never seen anyone love Klaus as much as he does, for the same reasons, with the same kind of reckless surrender. He wants to grab Dave by the arm and drag him onto the right side of corporeality, just so he can see the face Klaus makes in return.

“I think you did that for him,” Dave tells Ben. “Maybe you couldn’t fix it, but you sat next to him and, I don’t know, witnessed it. Hell, you’re doing the same thing for me, right now. And if you ever want to talk more about any of the stuff that happened when you were younger, I’ll try to do the same thing for you.”

“You’re really sweet,” Ben says, which sounds more reductive than he meant it to, but he can’t think of a more eloquent way to phrase it, and it’s also already out, hanging in the air between them.

“I try.”

“You don’t even have to try,” Ben says. “That’s the worst part.”

Dave waves a hand and looks down at his lap, but he’s properly smiling again, which feels like an accomplishment to Ben.

“My point is,” Dave says, even as he deflates a little when the shower down the hall stops running, “you help just by being here. So don’t feel guilty.”

“If you insist.”

Dave gives Ben one last kind shoulder pat before he vanishes, just as Klaus twirls into the room in nothing but a towel.

℘

Even if Ben had gotten to know more than maybe a dozen people during his lifetime, he can’t imagine coming across anyone more tactile than Klaus. Klaus needs physical proximity, he always has; the closeness grounds him, makes him feel present in his own skin. He used to latch himself onto all their siblings like a limpet when they were children, and the rest of them thought it was annoying, but Ben usually only got to touch other people vicariously through his passengers during murder, so he didn’t mind. He and Klaus would huddle together, soaking up the safe human contact. Ben would fall asleep alone and wake up in the morning with a terrible gangly brother coiled around him. As they all grew up, while the others got hissy and territorial, Ben got used to falling asleep with Klaus nearby, too.

After Ben died and became useless for snuggling, Klaus took up risky sexual behaviors, which were not, he once confided to Ben during a particularly vicious comedown, nearly as effective.

Cuddling is back on the table, now, so Ben has his head in Klaus’s lap, one of Klaus’s hands in his hair, the other arm around his shoulders, palm sitting in the curve of his waist. They’d had Allison and Luther keeping them company for a while, the two most awkward people on the planet sitting on opposite ends of the couch across from Klaus and Ben like they haven’t all known each other’s weird business for three decades. But they left (at the same time, with a spectacular lack of subtlety) and now Klaus and Ben are alone together, like always.

“Do you think dad’s shot messed with Luther’s chromosomes?” Klaus asks.

“Maybe?”

“I’m just imagining their hirsute babies.”

“Oh my god, Klaus,  _ eew _ .”

Klaus cackles up above Ben, because Klaus is the worst.

“I’m kidding,” Klaus says, when Ben doesn’t stop glaring at him. “They don’t sleep together, anyway.”

“Sorry, why the  _ fuck _ do you know that?”

“Because I talk to people,” Klaus says, his voice prim.

“You’re trying to tell me you talk to Allison  _ or _ Luther enough for them to tell you about the sex they don’t have?”

“Who else in this house is going to be able to give actual, normal advice about fucking?”

“I don't know, Diego?”

“Would  _ you _ ask Diego about sex things?”

Ben cedes that point.

“It was actually sweet,” Klaus says, petting Ben's hair. “They came to me separately to ask how they should tell the other one that they didn't want to bone.”

“What did you tell them?”

Klaus shrugs. “I told them both that the other one was a good, understanding person, and that they didn't have to have sex with someone to love them.”

“That's so earnest.”

“Yeah, well, they're both so hung up on their own bullshit, I figured I wouldn't punish them for trying to air some of it out.”

Ben mashes his cheek into Klaus's stomach. “I can't believe any of us ever had sex lives at all, honestly.”

“Ooh,” Klaus says, “ _ us _ , you say?”

Ben squints up at Klaus. “Who would I ever have had sex with?”

“I don't know. Maybe you and your buddies,” he says, reaching over to pat Ben firmly on the stomach, “were better acquainted than we thought.”

When Ben was alive, even the slightest touch to his stomach would have set his passengers roiling, but they’re calmer on this side of the veil. Ben used to work constantly just to keep them placated. Now, he has to consciously call to them, coax them into joining him on the strange in-between plane he occupies. They must not like it as much as the meaty mortal world. Ben is inclined to agree with them on that.

As nice as it is to not have to clamp down on an extradimensional rift all day, it’s another way that Ben is a degree removed from himself. Another way to make unfamiliar the body that he’d spent so much time and energy shaping into something that was his own.

“Jesus Christ, Klaus,” Ben says, trying to ignore the complete absence of response in his gut the same way he used to try to ignore the opposite. “I never fucked them.”

“Missed opportunity.”

“You're the worst.”

“At least you kept that pink dildo I pranked Diego with.”

“Oh my god.”

“I made sure I stole one that vibrated, too. I'm such a good brother.”

Ben grabs one of Klaus's hands and puts it back in his hair. “It makes sense, though. Allison’s marriage was, I mean, I don't want to say, uh.”

“Fake? Creepy?”

“I don't think she feels good about it, is all.”

“She definitely does not.”

“And Luther is Luther.”

“He really is.”

“Like, I'm trying to imagine hooking up with someone. I only ever touched dying people, mom, and you.”

“You would have managed, if you'd wanted to.”

“You managed, I guess.”

Klaus snorts. “You saw the sex I had.”

“I actually made a point of not seeing the sex you had.”

“I'm just saying, I don’t think getting high and fucking a bunch of other high people was me  _ managing _ anything.”

“It seems like you did okay for yourself towards the end.”

“Yeah. True.”

Ben shuts his eyes while Klaus pets his bangs off of his forehead and says, “Talk to me about Dave.”

Klaus sighs, more wistful than anything. “What about him?”

“Whatever you want. Everything.”

“You were there.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Klaus ruffles Ben's bangs down so he can smooth them back again. “You'll have to be more specific, brother mine.”

“I know about Dave. Tell me about  _ your _ Dave.”

“My Dave,” Klaus says, with a smile in his voice. “He was lovely. Even when we were alone, he spoke so softly. We spent a whole night of leave in a hotel together and never once talked above a whisper. Were you there? I didn't see you.”

“I thought you'd like some privacy.”

Klaus hums. “I almost wish you'd stuck around,” he says. “Then you could tell me it was real.”

“It was real,” Ben says.

“You would have liked him.”

“I did like him.”

“Like, he was so your type, me sleeping with him almost felt mean.”

Ben swats in Klaus's general direction without opening his eyes. “I don't have a type. Shut up.”

“Broad and wholesome?”

“Shut  _ up _ , oh my god.”

Klaus giggles and musses up Ben's hair again. “Remember that one reporter that always made your palms get sweaty? He had that, like, really awful blonde side part? You were so gross.”

“I hate you. You're changing the subject because you're scared of talking about your feelings.”

“So what if I am?”

“I'm trying to be,” Ben says, one of his swats finally landing on Klaus's stupid face, “ _ nice _ to you.”

“You’re always nice to me.”

“Yeah, maybe I should rethink that policy.”

Klaus pinches Ben’s cheek, and Ben opens his eyes to scowl at him. Klaus is smiling down at Ben, a tiny bit watery in the eyes. The weepiness is a sober Klaus development, like all the feelings he’d spent years beating into submission are finally geysering out of him. Ben had worried at first that Klaus would be embarrassed about crying, but Klaus revels in it, the novel sharpness of emotion, the vulnerability of tears. He savors it the same way he savors laughter, or anger, or contentment.

It’s different, with Klaus’s commitment to savoring. Back in rehab facilities and on cashless alleyway nights, Klaus always endured sobriety like a punishment. Granted, the complete lack of access to drugs has a lot to do with Klaus’s recovery this time around, but Ben’s proud of Klaus for leaning into it. He’s happy that Klaus feels safe enough to do it where Ben, and sometimes the others, can see.

There are times for Ben to say things like that to Klaus outright, and there are times for Ben to pinch Klaus back and start a brief but vicious pinching fight. This time is the latter.

Ben, after conclusively losing, says, “Dave.”

“Dave,” Klaus agrees. “I miss him. Is that what you want to hear?”

“I want to hear what’s on your mind,” Ben says, “whatever it is.”

“I love him,” Klaus says. “It sucks.”

“Have you looked for him?” Ben asks, aware he’s toeing a line he probably shouldn’t.

Klaus wags his head back and forth. “I’ve tried,” he says. “It’s weird. Nothing feels the same since Five did his Five thing. It’s like, I don’t know. Like someone relandscaped the yard. Same place, but all the grass is fake and there are surround sound speakers disguised as decorative rocks.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Ben says. “And he’ll be so happy to see you.”

“Gross,” Klaus says, but he puts his fingers back in Ben’s hair.

Ben tilts his head into the touch, which is the only reason he notices Dave, folded up in an armchair on the other side of the room. He’d be right in Klaus’s line of vision if Klaus could see him. Dave meets Ben's eyes and smiles, shy and sad.

“I’m right,” Ben says, talking to Klaus, looking at Dave. “You’re too stubborn.”

“What a lovely assessment of my character.”

Ben closes his eyes for a moment when Klaus gets the really good spot behind his ear. When he opens them again, he can’t see Dave anymore.

℘

Later, after dinner with their non-comatose siblings, Klaus curls up in his actual bed, for once, and Ben reads him to sleep. Ben had wheedled Five into picking up some books on one of his supply runs, and Ben is halfway through an arguably too on-the-nose Joan Didion memoir about death. He’s read some of it to Klaus like this, picking up wherever he happens to be on the nights Klaus asks for it. Klaus doesn’t react while Ben reads, too busy trying to pass out, but he brought up a passage about autumn leaves in conversation, once, so Ben hopes it’s landing.

Dave turns up at the foot of the bed almost the instant Klaus is asleep. He doesn’t say anything, so Ben keeps reading out loud, one hand on Klaus’s skinny shoulder.

At the end of the chapter, Ben dogears the page and puts the book on the nightstand. He scoots away from Klaus until he’s sitting with his shoulder against the wall and pats the bed in between them. Dave looks at the empty space for a long time, then crawls in and lies down on his side facing Klaus, his body carefully arranged so that none of it overlaps with Klaus’s miles of sprawled limbs.

“Okay?” Ben asks him, his voice as quiet as he can make it.

Dave nods and holds his arm up away from his side. Ben lies down and takes the invitation, wraps his own arm around Dave’s waist so they’re spooned together in the half of Klaus’s bed that Klaus isn’t starfishing all over.

“Sorry,” Ben says, barely a whisper. “I didn’t realize you were listening, before.”

“I felt him thinking about me.” Dave tilts his head back so he can look at Ben out of the corner of his eye. “He’s like a beacon. You know?”

“I know.”

“I feel like a moth. Like, slamming into glass trying to get to someone’s porch light.”

Ben hugs Dave closer to his chest.

“It was nice,” Dave says. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“Okay.”

They stop talking after that, motionless in the dark, nothing but the sound of Klaus’s rhythmic, unselfconscious sleep breaths. Ben remembers that he and Dave don’t breathe, anymore. He doesn’t think he’s ever been this quiet before, in life or in death.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, Dave says, “Thanks.”

“Yeah,” Ben says. “Of course.”

They sleep, or something like it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: this is the chapter with implied/referenced suicide. Ben and Dave talk briefly about how Ben died, and Ben explains that he went for months without letting his passengers out, knowing that when he finally lost control, they would kill him. He feels far enough removed from the memory to talk frankly about it, and while he understands why he did it, looking back, he wouldn’t do it again. Dave is very sweet about it, natch.

Their first few days at the house, they'd all taken turns at Vanya's beside, watching for some change in her. But she just laid there, catatonic, hibernating, and exhaustion crept up on all of them, and the rotation fell apart. They leave her door open, now, stick their heads in when they pass by.

All of them still sit with her now and then, on their own schedules. Ben knows this because he does it, too, and sometimes the others walk in when they can't see him. The first time Ben saw Five creep in like a thief and fold himself up into the armchair next to Vanya's bed, Ben had briefly considered staying. But there are some things that aren't his business.

Today, it's Ben and Klaus, a package deal. Klaus is trimming Vanya's nails, filing them down short, the way she’s always worn them. Klaus teases her about being boring but considerate, and tells her about the cute woman with box braids who lives down the street from them, who none of them have ever actually interacted with, because they never go outside.

“So,” Klaus says, Vanya’s tiny hand wrapped up in his, “you can still call dibs.”

“I don’t think that’s how dating works,” Ben says. Klaus hadn’t needed to ask before making Ben fully corporeal, just like neither of them had needed to say where they were going with weary shoulders and Klaus's arms full of grooming supplies. If Vanya can hear any of them, Klaus has made sure she’ll be able to hear Ben, too.

“Okay, chickadee, honeybee.” Klaus sets Vanya’s left hand down with the kind of deliberate care Ben is more accustomed to seeing him use on baggies and needles. “One down.”

Klaus starts on Vanya’s right hand, delicate clips along the edge of her thumbnail. Ben grabs a hairbrush from Klaus’s pile and runs it through what he can reach of Vanya’s bone-white hair without jostling her head. It only takes a few strokes on either side, but Ben goes over the same places again and again, making sure none of it is going to tickle Vanya’s face after they leave.

Ben doesn’t voice what he’s feeling, in case Vanya really can hear them from wherever she is, but he looks at Klaus, who looks back at him, miserable. Ben tries to think of anything to fill the silence, because Vanya isn’t stupid, and these long pregnant pauses aren’t going to fool her into thinking everything’s fine. But words don’t come. Words have never come easily to Ben.

When they brought Vanya into her room, the walls were dark blue, which they thought would be a peaceful color for her to wake up to. The walls are white, now, along with the sheets, and the wooden bedframe, and the carpet. Vanya’s body is sapped of pigment. Diego lifted her eyelids, once, and said he couldn’t see anything but white behind them. None of them have stayed long enough to find out what would happen to their own clothes, their skin, their hair.

“Maybe,” Ben says to her, still brushing her hair, “your power is minimalist design.”

Klaus snorts. “I always thought the moon was garish.” He lifts Vanya’s hand up to his face and kisses her knuckles, then gets back to work on her ring finger.

Ben hears Dave do one of his smallest laughs, not much more than a sharp exhale through his nose, and manages to keep himself from whirling around to look for him. He peeks up through his lashes while Klaus focuses on Vanya’s pinky, and finds Dave leaning on the wall next to the window, the light soft on his face through the white curtains. He’s smiling at the three of them, and Ben can’t find it in himself to feel intruded upon.

In lieu of talking to Dave directly, Ben turns to Vanya and says, “Remember when you gave me that backrub?”

Klaus glances up as he sets his nail clippers down, and it occurs to Ben that his brother might not know this story, either. “Backrub?”

“I never got normal, you know, uterus cramps,” Ben says, putting the brush down so he can hold Vanya’s free hand. “But after missions, I always got stomach cramps.”

Klaus looks simultaneously surprised and offended. “I thought those went away when we were kids!”

“They got less awful as we got older.”

“You could have told us.”

“Yeah,” Ben grants him. “But there’s nothing you could have done, really. I still don’t know if it was my actual body or some, like, interdimensional reverberation. I didn’t want to make you worry over something you couldn’t change.”

Klaus frowns, but doesn’t argue. Ben knows full well that Klaus has had to look at things Ben can’t even fathom, distortions and perversions of the human body that no adult should have to see, let alone a terrified child. Ben would listen if Klaus ever wanted to tell him, but listening would be the only thing he could do. He couldn’t carry that pain, only witness it.

Maybe Dave is right, and that’s enough. It helps when Klaus does it for Ben. But it never feels like enough when Ben does it for someone else.

“Hey,” Dave says. “Stop.”

Ben looks at Klaus so he can catch Dave in the corner of his eye. Dave has his arms crossed like he’s trying to be stern, but he mostly looks sad.

“Sorry,” Ben says.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Dave says, at the same time Klaus says, “Hey, it’s fine,” because Ben gets all of his morale boosts in stereo, now.

“Okay.” Ben hunches forward without thinking, like he’s an awkward fourteen-year-old again, which makes Klaus’s face absolutely melt with affection.

“You were telling me a story,” Klaus says.

“Yeah.” Ben looks back at Vanya, who hasn’t moved. “I was gearing up to try to climb the stairs. I thought everybody else had already gone to sleep. I was just kind of … lying on the couch, waiting for a break. And Vanya came in.”

Klaus turns his smile down on their sister.

“I guess I looked like I was miserable. She came over and asked me if I was okay. And I tried to lie, but she, um. I think I’d been crying.”

“The cramps don't still happen, do they?”

“Not anymore.”

“You sure?”

“Very sure.”

“Fine.”

“I told her my stomach hurt,” Ben says, “and she nodded like she already knew. And she just, you know. Rubbed my back.”

“‘Course she did.”

Ben squeezes his sister’s hand. “I never talked to you about why I didn’t like people touching my stomach. Mom and Pogo knew, and I guess dad knew, too. And Klaus knew a little bit. But Diego grabbed me around the waist during training, once, and I know he never would have done that if dad had talked to the rest of you about it. Maybe dad thought that me not wanting to hurt you guys would help me learn control.”

“Maybe he just hated all of us.”

“I was trying for a generous interpretation,” Ben says, but he’s smiling. “So you didn’t find out from me, or from dad. But you must have figured it out yourself, just from watching. You paid close enough attention to me to know that even if a belly rub would have helped everyone else with stomach cramps, it would have made mine worse. So you rubbed my back.”

Klaus reaches up to pet Vanya’s hair, which undoes all of Ben’s brushing work. Ben doesn’t mind.

“You should know,” Ben says, “that I didn’t start crying again because you made me hurt worse. You helped a lot. I was having feelings.”

Klaus gasps. “You had feelings?”

“I did, yes.”

“That must have been terrible for you.”

“It was nice,” Ben says to Klaus. “You should try it, sometime.”

“Never.”

“And  _ you _ should wake up, if you can,” Ben tells Vanya. “It’s okay if you can’t, or if you don’t want to, yet. We’re not mad. But we miss you. We’ll all be happy to see you again.”

Ben has gotten better about not letting himself hope for a response, for some miracle fluttering of eyelids or a sharp intake of breath, but he still slips up, sometimes. The silence drags while he and Klaus and Dave watch Vanya’s face, quiet as marble.

Klaus lays his head down on the bed, after a while, his cheek next to Vanya’s shoulder, nose tucked against her upper arm. Ben rubs his thumb over Vanya’s knuckles. He can’t feel how cool his siblings say Vanya’s skin is, or the way they say the texture has changed, gone smooth all over like a healed scar. But he remembers the way her hands felt when they were children, dry and chapped and always furnace warm.

Ben doesn’t notice Dave crossing the room until he’s standing next to Ben. Ben looks up like he’s checking the IV stand, and Dave steps to the left to put himself in Ben's line of vision. When Ben meets Dave’s eyes, Dave smiles at him, reaches out and rests his hand on Ben’s shoulder, firm, grounding pressure that Ben can’t help but lean into. Dave meets him halfway, his hip nudging Ben’s arm until Ben gives his weight over to Dave’s support.

“You’re a good brother, Ben,” Klaus says, muffled into Vanya’s sheets.

“You too,” Ben tells him.

“Take the compliment.”

Dave makes a sound that’s half a laugh and half something else that Ben can’t identify without seeing his face. “Yeah,” Dave says, squeezing Ben’s shoulder. “Good advice.”

“Fine,” Ben says. “If you insist.”

℘

“He never let me deflect the nice things he said about me,” Dave tells Ben, later. “It was terrible.”

“Seriously,” Ben says. “I think he just does it to be mean.”

“Half the time he distracted me so I couldn’t even try.”

“I’m assuming he distracted you and me in very different ways.”

Dave snorts. “What did he do to you?”

“Tickled me, mostly.”

“Yeah, different.”

“You can’t tell me he never tickled you, though.”

Dave smiles his stupid lovely smile and laughs his stupid lovely laugh. “Not after I tickled him back and won.”

“It’s what he deserves.” Ben leans back into the couch cushions. “Do you have siblings? Can I ask that?”

“I had a sister,” Dave says. “She was older than me. Engaged, when I left.”

“We could look her up.”

“I thought about it.” Dave looks down at his hands, folded in his lap. “Not like I could go visit, though.”

“If you ever want to check on her, we can,” Ben tells him. “Just for your own peace of mind.”

“Can’t really know if it’ll give me peace of mind until I do it, can I?”

Ben opens his mouth to say he’s sure that she’s fine, that she’s in the twilight years of a long and happy life, then shuts it, again. After a while, he says, “I guess not.”

Dave shrugs. “Something to think about, I guess.”

“Sorry I pulled at those stitches.”

Dave shakes his head. “It’s all right. Nothing I wasn’t already chewing on.”

“That’s a gross mixed metaphor.”

“Oh, you’re right. Yuck.”

“We're not zombies, Dave.”

“Yeah,” Dave says, grinning. “Just nice, normal, harmless ghosts.”

Ben scoffs, faking offense. “Speak for yourself.”

“My mistake.”

“You're not wrong, though.” Ben pats his belly, which is still enough of a novelty that he gets an echo of nerves every time he does it. “They've been very cooperative lately.”

“They weren't always?”

“Cooperative,” Ben says, “isn't the word I would use.”

Dave smiles for another beat, then stops, eyes going wide. “They didn't - did they?” he asks, gesturing vaguely at Ben.

Ben sets his jaw, trying to keep his smile and, judging from Dave's expression, failing. “Um.”

“Shit, sorry.” Dave sits back, holds up his hands. “That’s - wow, I'm so sorry. That’s none of my business.”

“No, it’s, uh.” Ben glances down at his stomach, calm as the middle of a freshwater lake. “It’s fine. I’ve never actually said it out loud.”

“You don’t have to.”

“No, I want to.” Ben wraps his arms around his own waist. “I mean, my siblings just sort of  _ know _ , so I’ve never gotten to tell anyone.”

Dave leans forward, attentive.

“I, um.” Ben purses his lips. “When I was alive, my passengers were a lot more active, and they got stronger the longer I kept them pent up. I could only control them if I let them out often enough. But whenever I let them out, people died, or I  _ felt _ like people were going to die, so I finally stopped. Dad was furious, but he never understood them, so he couldn’t figure out how to force me. I kept them inside for months. And when I couldn’t do it anymore, I let them kill me.”

Dave’s face softens. “Oh, Ben.”

“I wanted it to look like an accident, like I lost control, so nobody would feel bad. But I’d killed so many other people the same way. After a certain point, it felt like what I deserved, you know?”

“Hell,” Dave says. “I can’t imagine.”

“It feels like it happened to someone else,” Ben says, still somehow managing to look Dave in his big blue eyes. “I don’t even remember making the choice. I only remember being sad.”

Dave reaches out and takes Ben’s hand in his. “I want to go find your father and break his nose.”

Ben giggles in spite of himself.

“I mean,” Dave says, his voice so gentle and so kind, “I’ll never know what it’s like to hurt people like that, but I know it wasn’t your fault. You were a child, Ben.”

“I get that, now.” Ben squeezes Dave’s hand. He remembers holding hands, sweat trapped between palms, tiny finger twitches from trying to hold still or gripping too hard. Dave has big, broad hands, perfect for this. “I wouldn’t let them do it again.”

“That must have been such an awful way to grow up,” Dave says. “Having those things inside you.”

“It wasn’t weirder than the rest of my body, honestly.” Ben rests his free hand low on his belly. “All kinds of stuff in there felt like it didn’t belong.”

“Still.” Dave frowns, a sliver of a crease between his eyebrows. “Monsters like that, using a child however they wanted.”

Ben shakes his head. “No, they were just doing what they knew. I was scared of them, but they weren’t trying to be cruel. I never got the sense that they were angry with me. They were like a bird flying into glass, except the glass was the inside of my stomach cavity.”

“You’re defending them,” Dave says, but he’s frowning less.

“I mean, I’ve had them since I can remember.” Ben wrinkles his nose. “It feels weird to have them gone. I hated them so much, but they were still  _ mine _ , you know? As much as any of my body was mine.”

“You and Klaus,” Dave says. “It’s amazing that you grew up to be the people you are.”

“What, maladjusted thirty-somethings who know a lot of esoteric shit about death?”

“I meant,” Dave says, “good. You’re both so good.”

Ben doesn’t think he could let go of Dave’s hand even if he wanted to. “I don’t know if that’s an unbiased assessment.”

“It’s an informed assessment.”

“God. Come here.”

Ben pulls Dave into a hug, his arms wobbly as he wraps them around Dave’s shoulders. Dave leans into the contact like he’s starving for it, which he probably is, and puts both of his hands on the small of Ben’s back, keeping Ben close. Dave’s forehead is touching Ben’s jaw, which is making Ben feel dizzy, and there are all these short sunbleached curls right in front of Ben’s nose which he knows, without needing to be able to touch them, are as soft as Klaus’s, maybe even softer.

They hold each other like that for an amount of time that Ben doesn’t bother keeping track of. He doesn’t know what Dave smelled like when he was alive, or the texture of Dave’s skin, but he remembers the warmth of human contact, resting his chin on the curve of someone else’s neck and feeling the heat under their skin mingle with the heat under his.

“The thing that happened to you,” Dave says, his voice muffled in Ben’s chest. “I’m glad it didn’t stick.”

“It technically did.”

“You know what I mean.” Dave pulls away enough to look at Ben again. “I’m glad part of you is still here. I’m glad I met you.”

Ben doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just looks at Dave, his pale eyelashes and the tiny imperfections in his skin that he died with. There’s a freckle right above his lips, off center and charming. Ben wants to touch it, or bite it, but he stares at it, instead. Dave moves back towards Ben until their foreheads bump together, and Ben goes cross-eyed trying to focus on the freckle before he gives up and looks back up at the rest of Dave’s face. Ben never got this close to kissing anyone while he was alive, but he tries to imagine soft breath on his lips.

“Is this okay?” Dave asks, his voice barely a murmur, his mouth hovering over Ben’s.

Ben thinks about talking more, about telling Dave exactly how he aches, but it’s more likely than not that Dave aches the same way. So he kisses Dave, instead, and it feels like everything feels, but it’s Dave, so it also feels good. Incredible, even. Dave moves one hand up to the round of Ben’s shoulder and puts his other one on the outside of Ben’s thigh, as chaste as it’s possible to be when Ben can also feel phantom brushes of tongue against the inside of his lower lip.

He tilts his head back to nestle his shoulder in against Dave’s chest, slips his arms around Dave’s waist, and kisses him, and kisses him. Dave’s hand works its way up Ben’s thigh until the heel of his palm sits in the hollow under Ben’s hip.

Ben spreads his legs until Dave can fit between them.

“Sweetheart,” Dave says, in between long presses of his lips. “Ben.”

Ben pulls away and lies back until his head is resting on the arm of the couch, and Dave follows him like he’s magnetized. Ben shuffles them until Dave is settled between his thighs. Dave brushes his fingertips over Ben’s cheeks, the bridge of Ben’s nose, the delicate skin under Ben’s eyes.

Ben concentrates on the places Dave touches him. He knows that the boundaries of his body are resisting the boundaries of Dave’s. When he rocks his hips up, he gets Dave’s weight pressing him back down into the couch. Ben remembers being a teenager, quiet nights in the dark when his passengers were keeping to themselves, moving into his hand or his pillow, the shocks of pleasure building into a brick wall of feeling. He lets that memory hover in the front of his mind as he tilts his hips up again, and it echoes back down through the places his nerves used to be, crowding a shaky non-breath out of his chest.

“You’re gorgeous.” Dave follows his fingertips with his lips, suggestions of kisses.

“You’re chatty,” Ben says, smiling as Dave pulls back to hover above him.

“That gonna be a problem?”

Ben shakes his head and lifts up to nudge his nose against Dave’s. “It’s nice to be talked to.”

Dave kisses Ben back down onto the cushions, and they sink into each other, Ben’s limbs wound around Dave. Dave shifts in his hold, gloriously human, working himself against Ben in ways that Ben can’t predict or control. Dave has done this before -  _ with Klaus _ , Ben fails to not think - and he grinds into Ben in a practiced way that some primeval part of the afterimage of Ben's brain knows exactly how to interpret.

“Fuck,” Ben says, helpfully.

Dave kisses the sharpest part of Ben's jawline. “I don't know how this is supposed to work for us,” he says, mouth against Ben's skin.

“For dead people?”

“That,” Dave says, “and for people who love Klaus.”

Ben cups his hands around Dave's head, rubs his thumbs over the cropped hair behind Dave's ears. 

“We need to tell him you're here,” Ben says.

Dave makes a sound at the back of his throat. “It'll hurt him.”

“I know.”

“It'll turn you into a go-between.”

“I know.”

“He might object to,” Dave gestures down to where his hips are still making little abortive motions, “this.”

“He won't,” Ben says. “But asking first feels polite.”

Dave grins, kisses Ben one more time, and moves away. Ben stays on his back with his legs spread longer than he means to, but Dave keeps a respectable distance between them until Ben gets his shit together and sits up like a normal human being who wasn’t recently four layers of fabric away from getting fucked into the couch.

“That was fun, though,” Ben says, feeling the diametric opposite of intelligent.

Dave’s smile turns shy, his cheeks going red, which isn’t fair. He doesn’t even have the circulation to make a blush happen. It must be a preternatural cosmic conspiracy to completely destroy Ben. That’s the only explanation.

“Klaus used to tease me,” Dave says. “I guess it was probably when he knew you weren’t there. He said his brother was way more my type.”

“Oh, god. What did he say I was?”

“Uh,” Dave starts, then laughs. “Waify and bookish?”

That piece of shit. “If anyone’s the waif, it’s the asshole who used to eat pills for breakfast.”

“Yeah, I think you’re both my type.”

“Dude.” Ben puts his face in his hands. “You’re too cute. You have to stop being cute.”

“I’m cute?”

“Shut up. You’re so cute. I hate it.”

Ben peeks through his fingers at Dave’s big ridiculous smile. He wants to kiss it off Dave’s face, and then put it back afterwards.

“You, um,” Dave says, going softer, hesitant. “You really don’t think he’ll be angry?”

“I think,” Ben says, “that he operates under the assumption that everyone in the world will always have enough love left over for him.”

“I don’t think he’s wrong.”

“He’s not wrong about anyone in this house, at least.”

Dave leans his shoulder against the back of the couch. “I do love him.”

“I love him, too.”

“And I don’t want you to think that you’re a placeholder, or that I’m just, I don’t know, using you until I can get to him.”

“I honestly don’t think you’re capable of  _ using _ anyone.”

Dave ducks his head and says, “I like you,” like the prairie-bred sunflower he is.

“Yeah, well,” Ben says, “it’s mutual.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben gets the good dick he deserves, which includes vaginal penetration. He’s completely comfortable with it and has a great time, which is informed by my own experience as a trans masc person, but I know it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, so please read mindfully <3

Ben tells Klaus when they're alone, all their siblings otherwise occupied, no pressure for Klaus to respond any way other than the way he wants to. Ben has Klaus tucked in under his arm, his back to Ben’s side, head on Ben's shoulder, Klaus’s toothpick legs stretched out away from Ben on the rest of the couch.

“There's something I've been waiting to tell you,” Ben says, “because I didn't want it to make you miserable.”

Klaus looks up at him. “That's a scary start.”

“It's an honest start.”

“That's what makes it scary.”

Klaus smiles, then, and Ben smiles back, mirrors of each other. Klaus puts his cheek back against Ben’s shoulder.

“Dave is here,” Ben tells him.

Klaus half sits up, then settles back down in Ben's arms. “Not  _ here _ , here.”

“Not right now. He’ll be back later. He wanted to let you be angry at him if you needed to.”

Klaus shakes his head. “I'm not angry at him. Or at you,” he adds, like he thinks Ben is going to vanish out from under him at the first hint of a misunderstanding, which Ben doesn't like. “I just - how long has he been here?”

“A few weeks.”

“Now I'm a little angry.”

“Only a little?”

“Only a little.”

“Do you want everything at once?”

Klaus looks over his shoulder at Ben. 

“We made out a little bit.”

Klaus snorts. “ _ Only a little? _ ”

“Only a little.”

“Impressive restraint.”

“I know,” Ben says. “He’s really cute.”

“I take it the making out expedited the Telling Klaus Timeline?”

“That wasn't the only thing.”

“It was the main thing, though.”

“Admittedly, yeah.”

Klaus huffs, acting put-upon, and nestles down further into the crook of Ben's arm. “All the dead people in history and you have to go for my boyfriend.”

“He's still your boyfriend.”

“It sounds like he's  _ our _ boyfriend.”

“That's a conversation for all three of us to have.”

“I mean, we've shared my remaining brain cells for the past seven years, why not this?”

“Klaus,” Ben says in his softest voice, the one that Klaus recognizes every time but still allows himself to calm down to. “It's okay if the answer is no.”

“The answer is yes,” Klaus snaps, “obviously, I just want to know why you can see him and I can't.”

Ben doesn't have an answer for that, so he pulls Klaus closer to his chest.

“You've never seen another dead person that I didn't see first. You would have told me. You know,  _ eventually _ .”

“I don't get it either, Klaus.”

“I'm sober,” Klaus says, all the frustration trembling out of his voice. He pushes his face into Ben's bicep. “I'm supposed to be able to make this work when I'm sober.”

“We'll figure it out,” Ben tells him.

“I miss him.”

“He misses you, too.”

“At least he gets to look at my beautiful face.”

“It's a very beautiful face,” Dave says. Ben glances up to find him standing in the doorway, looking miserably, desperately fond.

“He says it's a very beautiful face,” Ben says, his cheek resting against Klaus’s hair.

Klaus lets out a small strangled sound. “Is he-”

“I'm here.”

“He says he's here.”

Klaus pulls his feet back to make space on the couch, and Ben watches Dave cross the room and sit down, just far enough away from Klaus to keep the illusion that Klaus could be looking at him, could reach out with his toes and touch him.

“Hey, darlin’,” Dave says.

“I'm not saying that,” Ben tells both of them.

“What?” Klaus asks wetly. “You have to. What did he say?”

“It's awful,” Ben says. “It's the worst thing I've ever heard.”

“You don't have to quote me exactly,” Dave says, at the same time Klaus says, “You can summarize.”

“No,” Ben says to Klaus, “you have to know the dark side of the man you fell in love with.”

Klaus sniffles at the place Dave is sitting. “Now I'm concerned.”

“He said,” Ben says, putting on his best cornfed midwestern drawl, “ _ Hey, darlin’. _ ”

Klaus cackles, shrill and weepy. “Oh my God, he  _ is _ here. Hello, beautiful.”

“I love you.” Dave lifts a hand, lets it hover in Klaus's direction.

Ben wraps both of his arms around Klaus. “He loves you,” Ben says. “I love you. I love how much he loves you.”

“Shit,” Klaus says. He's holding Ben's forearm in a vice grip with both of his hands. “Babe. I'm gonna see you soon.”

“I know,” Dave says.

Ben hugs Klaus tighter. “He knows.”

℘

They talk until Klaus falls asleep in Ben's arms. Ben eases him down onto the couch, a pillow underneath his head, a blanket over his thin body.

Ben stands and holds out his arms to Dave, who unfolds on the couch and slides his hands up Ben's hips to settle on his waist. He lifts Ben's shirt with his thumbs and kisses the skin above the hem of Ben's jeans. Ben runs the tips of his fingers through Dave's hair, from his forehead to the base of his neck and back again.

“Come to bed,” Dave says, his mouth still pressed to Ben's belly.

It's a question, not a command, so Ben says, “Lead the way.”

They end up in Klaus's room, tangled together on his bed in a pile of mismatched blankets, Ben's head on Klaus's worn-in pillow. Dave kisses Ben's mouth, pushes Ben's shirt up to his shoulders and kisses his chest, his collarbones, the hollow between his ribs. Ben tugs his shirt the rest of the way over his head, never mind the mechanics of the preternatural clothing of the deceased, and gets Dave's off, too. There's a lot of skin. Ben touches it, feels it shift under his hands as Dave moves, pulls Dave's body down on top of his and fills in the gaps with memories of wrapping his own arms around himself during the worst nights, the ones where his passengers were restless and he took comfort in the feeling of his own body, warm and solid, a vessel for himself and a thousand other vast, unknowable things.

“You're so,” Dave says, and kisses Ben again. “You take such good care of him.”

“Goes both ways,” Ben says, “believe it or not.”

“Doesn't make you any less wonderful.”

Ben gives himself that. He kisses Dave, runs his palms over Dave's broad back.

“You take care of me, too,” Dave says, lips brushing Ben's as he speaks. “I wanna take care of you.”

Ben makes an embarrassing noise, mostly because he's about to let that bad of a line work on him. He reaches down between them and unbuttons his jeans, undoes the zipper, wiggles the fabric down around his hips. Dave helps him peel the denim down and off his legs, which leaves Ben spread out on his back, nothing but boxer briefs between him and Dave.

“Did you ever do this when you were alive?” Dave asks, sitting back on his heels, his hands safely on Ben's calves.

It could be a patronizing question from someone else, but not from Dave. Ben shakes his head. “Just with myself.”

Dave waggles his brows. “That's a picture.”

“Picture a depressed twenty-something mashing his hands around silently in the dark.”

“You're not giving yourself nearly enough credit.”

“You're biased.”

Dave chuckles and shakes his head, leans down and kisses Ben on the cheek. “If this is too fast, I can hold off. I’m not here to push.”

“Thank you. But you're not pushing.”

“Tell me if I ever do.”

“I will,” Ben says, and he means it.

Dave fits his hands in the curve of Ben's waist and tongues at Ben's throat. He keeps his hips at a considerate distance until Ben wraps a leg around him and tugs him down, and then he's  _ there _ , his weight bearing him down between Ben's thighs, a delicious pressure that Ben tilts himself into. At Ben's first proper roll of his hips, Dave groans, leaning up on an elbow so he can lick into Ben's mouth again.

“Ben,” Dave murmurs between deep kisses. “You don't know what you do to me.”

“I have some idea,” Ben says, with a pointed thrust up.

Dave pulls back and beams down at Ben, crinkly eyes and handsome little dimples that Ben wants to crawl into and take a nap in. “You’ll have to let me know what’s off limits. I could use help narrowing down all my ideas.”

It’s a sweet way of asking a potentially uncomfortable question. Ben likes his body, all the things his testosterone regimen gave, took, and left behind. He can imagine a version of his life that would have made him like his body less, but that’s not the life he got. He got the murder and early death life, instead.

“You,” Ben says, “should do whatever you want to me.”

Dave bites his lip, an unconscious and outrageously sexy gesture that makes Ben want to be naked immediately. He hooks his thumbs in the band of his boxers and tugs them lower on his hips, down to the end of the soft trail of hair from his navel.

“Here.” Dave leans back and helps Ben pull his underwear the rest of the way down and off his legs.

It occurs to Ben that Dave has probably never seen a body like his, which Ben might, in another situation, feel nervous about. But with the way Dave’s eyes drink Ben in, the way his lips part and he leans forward like he’s forgotten he has control over his torso, Ben just feels kind of hot. He arches his back and spreads his legs a little wider, makes sure Dave gets a good look before he dives back in to touch.

“Shit, Ben.” Dave ducks down to kiss Ben’s knee. “Tell me what you like.”

“Fingers,” Ben says, managing to keep his voice mostly even. “That’s what I did, most of the time. I had a dildo, and I liked that, too.”

“You want it slow? Hard?”

“Slow, to start. I-” Ben cuts off on a shaky sigh as Dave kisses his belly. “I like it slow, and, um. Deep.”

“I can work with that.” Dave grins and moves up to kiss Ben again. He runs his hand from Ben’s ribs all the way down his side to the soft curve of his ass, further down his thigh, and back again. Ben never touched himself like that beyond cursory passes in the shower, but it feels good in a way other than the tactile. It feels thorough, possessive - like even though they’re putting their hands on each other through the filters of their own histories, Dave still wants to map out every inch of Ben. Like even though Dave will never be able to learn Ben by touch until he knows all the eccentricities of Ben’s body as well as he knows his own, he still wants to try.

They break away from each other, and Dave sits back on his calves, his hands on Ben’s knees. Ben spreads them wider without any pressure.

“Gorgeous,” Dave says, his hands sliding up to Ben’s thighs.

Ben wants to be embarrassed by how quickly he responds to the praise, but more than that, he wants Dave to tell him he’s gorgeous every second of every day. So he hums and shuffles his hips down the mattress toward Dave.

“Can I?” Dave asks, running his palms up and down the inside of Ben's thighs, thumbs dipping agonizingly close to the place Ben wants them.

Ben nods, and groans as Dave slides two fingers into him, the memory of Ben's own first experimental forays into his anatomy overlaid with the immediacy of his feelings for Dave, the way Dave looks at him like he wants to devour him in the most glorious ways. Ben spreads his legs until he knows that his muscles should protest and holds them there, hooks his heels over Dave's back.

“Look at you,” Dave rumbles, and then he ducks down and presses his tongue above his fingers, and Ben reaches up to hold onto the pillow behind his head and takes a big, gasping parody of a breath he no longer needs.

Dave stays with his shoulders between Ben's thighs until Ben is moaning with every push, angling his pelvis to work Dave's fingers deeper, a third slipping in beside the first two, an easy stretch. Dave crooks his fingers up toward Ben's belly, his fingertips fluttering over the spot Ben found when he was sixteen and never left alone for the remaining seven years of his life. Ben had gotten good at angling the heel of his palm while he had his own fingers inside himself, just to give himself something solid to rub off against, but Dave's tongue is better, an unpredictable pattern of pressure paired with the knowledge that if they were alive, or if they’d somehow done this before it was too late, Ben would be taking over all five of Dave's senses. He’d be Dave’s entire universe. Dave would be able to  _ taste _ him.

That thought gets Ben’s legs shaking, which gets Dave’s mouth pressing harder, his fingers fucking deeper.

“You want it like this?” Dave asks, his voice muffled, lips moving against Ben. He looks up at Ben from between Ben’s legs, which is an image Ben is going to hang on to for the rest of his existence.

“God, Dave,” Ben grits out, “you can’t just - yeah, yes, I do. Holy shit. And I want,” he starts, and then Dave seals his lips and sucks, his tongue working against the pressure, and Ben loses the capacity for language until he stops. “I want you,” he tries again, voice coming out embarrassingly thin, “to fuck me. If you want to.”

Dave ducks down and licks a circuit around where his fingers disappear into Ben’s body. “You know I want to.”

Ben reaches down and grabs onto the back of Dave’s head, tugs him closer, and any worries Ben might’ve had about being too rough vanish when Dave makes the loudest sound Ben’s heard from him yet. Dave works his tongue above his fingers, flicks it up in quick strokes, and Ben keeps him there, rocks down onto his face until all Dave has to do is stick his tongue out and hold it there for Ben to ride. It feels like Ben’s own fingers used to feel when he really got himself going, when everything was slick and wet and each touch glided seamlessly into the next, all on top of the gentle tugging suction from Dave’s mouth, Dave’s fingers fucking harder inside Ben, and the reminder every time Ben looks down that this is Dave -  _ Dave _ \- burrowed between Ben’s thighs, broad and wholesome, putting all his sweet single-minded focus into making Ben feel good.

Ben hasn’t had an orgasm since dying, never even thought to try, and he doesn’t know what he’s waiting for until it happens. It starts in his brain, or wherever his consciousness makes its home these days, because that’s where everything starts and ends. But his brain sends it down between his thighs, because it remembers where this feeling belongs, hot bathwater spilling out of Ben’s spine into his pelvis. It’s like his body is trying to flush Dave out, but Dave still fits, pushes even deeper, makes room for himself with his fingers and his mouth. Dave’s moving his tongue again, licking the heavy blunt flat of it against Ben in time with each curl inside him, and Ben starts to bear down in the same rhythm, a noise falling out of his throat each time the pressure crests.

“That,” Ben whispers, like Dave isn’t already doing everything right. “Like that-”

Coming feels like getting punched, in that Ben's ears ring and the world goes briefly blurry at the edges. He loses Dave’s pattern completely, twisting his waist to get Dave as deep as he can go. He vaguely notices Dave shifting between his legs, following as Ben wriggles around, still working his fingertips and tongue while Ben loses track of his limbs.

“Okay,” Ben gasps, even as he tightens his fingers in Dave’s hair. “Okay, come on, come here-”

Dave keeps his fingers inside Ben’s body, but he surges up and latches his mouth onto the column of Ben’s throat. He starts rolling his hips in time with his fingers curling, and Ben braces his heels on the mattress, lets Dave work him through the last of it as the muscles he doesn’t have start, against all metaphysical logic, to relax.

“Wow,” Dave says, sounding faint, and kisses the underside of Ben’s jaw, using his free hand to hold Ben’s waist and slow his movements.

Ben lets himself come down, concentrates on Dave above him, visibly hard in his pants and still so attentive. Dave slips his fingers gently out of Ben and rubs up and down between Ben’s lips, just enough pressure to save Ben the shock of going from something to nothing.

“How do you want me?” Dave asks him.

Ben was never a commanding person in life, never in charge, low enough on the totem pole of the Academy that all he ever had to do was control his passengers and follow someone else’s plan. He remembers the few times he did end up telling someone to do something, the little rush that came from issuing an order with the expectation that it would be followed. He dregs that up and lets it sit between his legs as he tells Dave, “On your back.”

Dave groans and does as he’s told.

Ben kneels between Dave’s thighs and goes to work on his fly. They get Dave’s pants down and off his legs together, and Ben runs his hands up Dave’s bare thighs, dipping his fingertips inside the hems of Dave’s underwear.

Now, Ben thinks, would be the time to get Dave naked. But he leaves Dave’s briefs alone, and moves back up Dave’s body until he’s straddling Dave’s hips. Ben bears his weight down on Dave through the thin layer of cotton and rocks forward into the blunt pressure between his thighs. Dave’s mouth falls open, and he meets Ben halfway the second time, the third, the fourth.

“Ben,” Dave says, his voice going desperate.

Ben tilts his shoulders back and looks down his body, his flat chest, the hints of definition in his belly, to where his hips meet Dave’s. He touches his own collarbones, lets his hand meander down his chest while he and Dave grind together. He dips below his hips, runs his fingertips up the crease at the start of his thigh. On the next thrust, he sneaks his fingers in between their laps and tugs the waistband of Dave’s underwear down just far enough to get some skin on skin, and Dave shuts his eyes, flushed down to his chest.

A few more circles of Ben’s hips down into Dave’s lap, and Dave gasps, “Please,” which hadn’t even occurred to Ben as a thing that he might be able to get Dave to say. But it sounds good in Dave’s voice, the whole word trembling with need, and Ben lifts himself up so they can get Dave’s underwear the rest of the way off, lost somewhere in the piles of blankets as they come back together.

Ben takes Dave in his hand and strokes him a few times, experimental. Dave spreads his thighs and grabs the sheets when Ben adds a squeeze on the upstroke, so Ben keeps doing that. He has no idea what touching a dick is supposed to feel like, but Dave clearly knows what it feels like to be on the other end of it, and his reactions are more than enough to distract Ben from whatever emotions he might have about this gorgeous part of Dave sitting the same as any random object in the palm of his hand.

“Honey,” Dave says through clenched teeth, which Ben likes almost as much as  _ please _ . “You’re gonna finish this before it starts.”

Ben moves his hands to Dave’s hips, smiling up at him. “Been a while, huh?”

Dave makes a sound that Ben can only classify as a giggle, looking like someone left him in their jeans pocket and put him through the wash. “You could say that.”

Ben kisses Dave’s stomach and resituates himself, his knees on either side of Dave’s waist. Dave keeps his hands safely on Ben’s thighs, steadying without pushing, as Ben reaches down to guide Dave into his body.

Ben remembers his vibrator, the first time he pushed it all the way in, the unexpected power of taking something inside such a delicate and resilient part of himself and holding it there, the exact opposite feeling of his passengers bursting out into the world. He'd flexed his muscles then, testing the resistance, and he does the same thing to Dave now. Dave throws his head back into the pillow and moans, so Ben does it again, and again.

“Fuck,” Dave says, hoarse. He puts his hands on Ben's hips and rolls himself up, deeper into Ben's body.

Ben nods his head, so Dave tightens his hold and keeps moving, dragging pressure against all the most sensitive places Ben ever teased out of himself, slick and effortless. He tries to memorize the stunned look on Dave's face, but his eyes keep sliding shut without his permission.

“You're so good,” Ben murmurs, and Dave squeezes Ben's hips.

They move together until Ben completely loses track of time. There's something unfamiliar and familiar building low in his belly again, and Dave's lips are parted, kiss-bitten and still shiny from going down on Ben. Dave might not know exactly what Ben tastes like, but Ben does, so he leans down, kisses himself off of Dave’s lips, earthy and sour. Dave groans and grabs Ben’s ass to hold him still as he snaps his hips up into him. Shocks fly through Ben’s body until he has to pull away and gasp.

Ben hoists himself back up with his hands on Dave’s chest. They look good spread across Dave’s pale skin, so he leaves them there. The new leverage lets him rock back harder onto Dave, which is also nice. Dave grins when Ben finds a rhythm and lets his hands fall down onto the mattress. Ben tilts his pelvis to get the angle right and drops his hips back, lifts them up, drops them back, bites his lip, takes Dave as deep as he can, tries to take him even deeper.

“Ben.” Dave reaches back up to smooth his hands up and down Ben’s arms. “Sweetheart.”

Ben sits back and braces his hands on Dave’s thighs, and Dave keeps touching him, rubs over Ben’s pecs, thumbs his nipples. One of Dave’s hands makes its way down between their legs, and he fits a knuckle in on either side of Ben’s clit. He squeezes, and Ben shouts, switches from thrusts to a heavy, rolling grind, holding Dave inside himself and circling his hips into Dave’s hand.

“That feels-” Ben breaks off and gasps as Dave tucks his thumb in between his fingers and starts to rub. “How does that feel so good?”

Dave shakes his head. “Just let it.”

Ben shuts his eyes and lets it feel good. He lets it feel good, and better, and better, the solid weight of Dave inside him, Dave’s clever fingers working him over, his own muscles tensing and relaxing, all of it building up at the core of him until it coalesces, spreads back in bursts through him, his stomach, his thighs. Dave eases him through it, gentle pressure from his thumb, slow shifts of his hips, keeping himself inside Ben as Ben bears down and trembles. Every wave of it punches a new string of sounds out of Ben’s chest, noises he never let himself make while he was alive, little vulnerable, helpless things that linger in his throat as he starts to get control of his body again.

When he opens his eyes and looks down, Dave is staring up at him like he’s seeing color for the first time.

Ben isn’t sure he’ll be able to make words yet, but he manages to climb off of Dave and lie down on his back in the space between Dave and the wall. He tugs at Dave’s hip and spreads his legs, shameless. Dave takes the invitation and gets between Ben’s thighs again, slides back into him in one push that sends an aftershock of pleasure skittering through him. Ben hooks his heels behind Dave’s calves, wraps his arms around Dave’s waist, and lets Dave fuck him the way he needs, short sharp thrusts that hover on just the right side of too much.

Dave comes with his face pressed into the curve of Ben’s neck, kissing his throat. Ben squeezes his muscles a few more times, clenching down around Dave as much as he can, drawing it out of him. The tension saps from Dave’s body, and he settles his weight down on top of Ben. Ben tilts his head to find Dave’s mouth and kisses him, lazy pushes of lips.

Ben whines when Dave pulls out, so Dave slips two fingers back in for Ben to feel.

They lie like that for a while, kissing with Dave’s hand tucked between them, until Ben eases Dave’s fingers out of himself and wraps Dave’s arm around his waist.

Dave tugs Ben close and kisses the corner of his mouth. “Good?”

Ben laughs, giddy. “Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah, very good.”

“It looked good.”

“It felt good.”

Dave kisses Ben again, and Ben adds, “I’ve never felt anything like that before.”

Dave pulls back to look at Ben. Eventually, he says, “You’ve probably felt the pieces of it. You just never put them all together.”

“That’s not - I didn’t think that was how this worked.”

“I don’t think either of us has any idea how this works.”

Ben cups Dave’s jaw in both of his hands and coaxes him back down until their chests are flush together, their legs tangled, arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders.

“I want to do that again,” Ben says, his mouth next to Dave’s ear. “Shit. I want to do that so many more times.”

“Give me a minute.” Ben can feel Dave grinning against him.

“A minute?”

“Maybe twenty minutes.”

“Your fingers have a refractory period?”

Dave laughs out loud and turns his head to kiss Ben’s cheek. “I’ve unleashed a monster.”

“No, that’s my job.”

Dave props himself up on his elbows and rests his forehead against Ben’s, the tips of their noses barely touching. “You’re so beautiful,” he says. “Everything about you is beautiful.”

Ben tilts his chin up enough to press a kiss to Dave’s lower lip. “You’re not so bad, yourself.”

It’s a weak follow-up to one of the most earnest things anyone has ever said to Ben, but Dave doesn’t look like he minds. He smiles and mouths at Ben’s jawline, shifts his weight to one elbow and slides the other hand down Ben’s side to his hip. Ben spreads his legs again, already so easy for Dave, and Dave’s fingers fit back inside him like they never left.


End file.
